Date of Award

August 2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Educational Foundations & Research

First Advisor

Pempho Chinkondenji

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to describe and analyze diverse stakeholders’ involvement in the decision-making process that leads to school consolidation in rural Norway. The study contributes to a growing scholarly literature which identifies rural school consolidation in Scandinavia and internationally as a noteworthy problem, and which has called for further empirical study to inform consolidation decision-making. Using a qualitative case study methodology, I selected four municipal sites from three counties in Norway, each of which had at least one school consolidated or closed between 2020 and 2024. The theoretical frameworks for approaching this case study are institutional logics and multiple streams analysis, which direct the study’s responses to the research questions, provide for consistent treatment of stakeholder roles, and allow the comparison of argumentation of various perspectives. Data about these municipal sites, including a range of stakeholder interviews, local and national documentation, and site visits were collected and integrated so as to make Norway the national context of the case study. The study represents the views of a wide range of stakeholders in each municipal site, including parents and community leaders, principals and teachers, as well as administrators and politicians.

The findings describe stakeholder perceptions and decision-making factors as they are expressed across diverse sources and reported in procedural documentation. In addition, the findings apply the frameworks to characterize contentions and vulnerabilities that arise between stakeholders during and after school consolidation, such as gaps in public discourse, short-termism, rushed processes, and marginalization of the factor of school quality. The findings and discussion of this analysis pose questions about the values and voices of rural community members, the ideas and choices that influence the administration of rural schools, and whether the growing trend of rural school consolidation serves public interests in Norway, as well as internationally.

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